I sat down with author Scott Alexander Hess (The Butcher's Sons) to dialogue about fact versus fiction, how violence can be poetic, and what it really means to mine a truly dangerous literary landscape.

As bad as things can seem these days for musicals on Broadway -- as vacuous, as child-centric or adult-nostalgic as most Broadway musicals distressingly are at the moment -- the good news is that there are Broadway ticket buyers also paying to see Hedwig. Which is extraordinary.

Early Scrooge and Draper appear "normal" enough, if unsavory, to be representative of mainstream society, yet we are aware of a low-grade pathology at work. Bateman would drive off the cliff, laughing maniacally.

Bret Easton Ellis insists on asserting his "dudeness" by publicly splitting himself from the "elf gays." For Ellis there seems to be no realness, no masculinity, no power (and perhaps no self) without a despised, feminine, vulnerable foil.